My Dwarf hamster just gave birth!

Question
Hi! My dwarf hamster just gave birth this morning. I left the father inside the cage with the mother and the litter, as I have read that fathers help in taking care of the babies.I have a 2 storey cage with a small ladder and a small hamster house on the 2nd floor. Fortunately,the mother gave birth in the house and carried her litter towards the lower floor on the corner. I gave them tissues last night and they have made a small nest on that corner on the lower floor. Now I can barely see the mother since she's huddled under the tissues with the other babies but left one out! One baby was with the father all the time,he groomed the baby and the baby kind of 'cries' when he leaves, so he sleeps with the baby underneath him. What I want to know would be --
1. Is that ok for one baby to be ignored by the mother and be nesting with the father instead? I am worried that the baby cannot nest with the mother and probably is not getting milk?
2. Do the mother and babies really 'hide' under the tissues? I can barely see them!
3. I normally feed the parents with hamster feed/fruits (apples once a week). Should I give a special diet to the nursing mother? Can I feed her cheese / eggwhites for extra protein? the only cheese that I have would be the ones bought in the supermarket. What simple food can I feed them?
4. Should I remove the ladder towards the 2nd floor where the mother has stocked food?
5. When can I feed the babies? Can I feed them bread dipped in milk?
6. When do I separate the babies from the parents?

Thanks so much! I'm really excited that my hamster gave birth and I want to make them as comfortable as I can.

Answer
Hi,
thank you for your question.
1. Any babies that don't get carried into the nest are usually sick or too weak to make it. Try to place the baby near to the entrance of the nest (with a stick or rub your hands with bedding to hide your smell) and see if the mother carries it in. If she doesn't, you have to try and handraise the baby. Here are tips on how to do that:
http://www.afrma.org/rminfo8.htm

2. Yes, they hide under the tissue. Don't check on them for now, that just stresses the mother. When she leaves the nest, you can check on the babies but don't touch them.

3. The mother needs animal protein now, mealworms or crickets are the best source for that as well as dried brine shrimp. Cooked egg or dry catfood that doesn't contain sugar is an option, cheese is usually too salty. Otherwise, they don't need special food. Fruits shouldn't be given to dwarf hamsters becuase they are very suspectible to diabetes and other disease caused by a diet with too much sugar. Vegetables and leafy greens are fine and should be given at least every other day.

4. You don't need to remove the ladder.
5. When they are ready to eat solid food, they can eat just what their parents eat. Cow milk is toxic for all rodent babies!
6. You need to seperate them from their mother and male from female babies when they are 28-29 days old, not sooner or later. I highly recommend seperating the parents, too, otherwise you'll be up to your neck in hamster babies in no time. The mother is probably already pregnant again and it's very much stress for her to give birth and raise the babies. Apart from that, while dwarf hamsters do live together as breeding pairs in the wild, they usually fight sooner or later in captivity, probably because of the lack of space. They seperate and look for new partners in the wild, too.

I hope I was of some help to you
Jennifer